In public safety systems, it is crucial to provide resources to public safety responders currently involved in, or about to be involved in, an important event. Such an event may be an emergency incident, which may occur in urban or rural environments. In case of system congestion, when there may not be enough resources to satisfy all the needs of the public safety responders, systems have to choose who should be granted access to valuable resources, and who should have access denied. Such decisions should, preferably, be made quickly.
In today's public safety environment, there may be a number of devices that are related to a particular public safety user. Such a public safety user may carry a land mobile radio (LMR) and, for example, one or more broadband devices. One or more of these devices may be connected to different access networks, using the same or different radio technologies.
In broadband LTE systems, control over network access and utilization of radio resources is achieved by setting particular Quality of Service (QoS) parameters. By setting particular QoS parameters, the system can for example provide particular Guaranteed Bitrates (GBR), prioritize service usage, and/or allow potential pre-emption using Allocation and Retention Priority (ARP).
There remains a need for an effective way to set QoS for one or more bearers allocated to one or more devices that are related to a particular public safety user involved in an important event. Furthermore, current technique tend to require a large amount of infrastructure to determine whether public safety responders should have access to, or be denied access to, these valuable resources.
Accordingly, there is a need for at least a method and system for coordinating the setting of QoS for one or more bearers for a set of communication devices related to a user.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.